Coral Gables Watch

None of Coral Gables’ Economic Sectors are Expected to Recover Soon

August 16, 2010 Leave a comment

Isn’t it time for someone in Coral Gables to make a city-wide effort to promote new and more dynamic leading sectors. All of our main sectors are in the “doldrums”. Will Coral Gables stay in the doldrums for a long time–I guess that is highly likely.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff going for us,”…

“but construction and real estate will be in the doldrums for quite some time.”

“We will be dragged down by the problems in real estate and construction,”…

“Other areas that are lagging include financial institutions, where there has been a lot of consolidation, and also professional services such as attorneys, accountants and engineers. The volume of their business based on employment is still in negative territory.”

via Pulling out of the downturn fastest: healthcare, tourism, education, government.

Filed under Coral Gables

Robert Reich’s Recitation of First Year Economics

August 15, 2010 Leave a comment

Robert Reich’s view (he is a liberal economist) is a very simple one and it is contained in any principles of economics text–growth is still sluggish and unemployment is high; consumption is stagnant; business is not investing; and exports are not growing (we are not Germany). The only remaining option is increased spending on effective jobs programs. This will help Coral Gables and its businesses if you desire for more sales, trade, exports and demands for local services, and, eventually, even stable and slightly rising real estate values.

It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.

via Robert Reich (Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.).

Filed under Economy

Coral Gables Understatement of the Day

August 15, 2010 Leave a comment

Quote of Mr. Juan del Busto, Regional Executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

..we still have significant progress to make in order to achieve a sustained recovery at the level necessary to improve the unemployment and foreclosure rates.”

via Realtors host lending and financing summit.

Filed under Business and Commerce

Coral Gables is Not Immune from the Foundering of the Middle Class

August 15, 2010 Leave a comment

These are international views of what is happening in the US. Coral Gables cannot “power ahead” in this kind of world in which the middle class is reducing is standard of living on a grand scale.

Growth rates are stuttering and a recovery is struggling to take hold. It may even now be showing signs of going backwards again, as countries such as Germany start to power forward. Joblessness has taken hold in America, with the numbers of long-term unemployed reaching levels not seen since the Depression of the 1930s. The figures are frightening and illustrate a society that remains in deep trouble.

…

America appears to be a society splitting down the centre, shattering the middle class that long formed the cultural bedrock of the country and dividing it into a country of haves and have-nots. “A once unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal,” warned Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in a recent New York Times column. Or, as Steven Green, an economics lecturer at Baylor University, put it to the Observer: “We are really in a tough spot right now.”

via Jobless millions signal death of the American dream for many | World news | The Observer.

Filed under Coral Gables